The Clockmaker's Daughter

by Kate Morton

Time had lost its shape again, its arrow dissolving into dust around her.

Stories have to be told or else they die.”

In the space of an afternoon, it seemed that the world had tilted and everything had slid off-center.

“Though there are those who say it is the amulet that finds its owner. That the earth knows best when, and with whom, to share her secrets.”

She was adamant about it: the earth gives up its secrets in good time, she liked to say, and always to the person it intends.

Hora pars vitae. His Latin teacher had made them write it out in lines. Every hour is a part of life.

“Place is a doorway through which one steps across time.”

Ad occasum tendimus omnes, he had read once on a grey, pitted gravestone in Dorset. We are traveling each towards his sunset.

Here lieth one who sought truth and light and saw beauty in all things, 1842-1882.

Wiltshire is an old and enchanted county, and Edward used to say that when the full moon rose high and silver, the ancient magic could still be felt.